Voluntary redundancy selection

[mags999]

People creating mischief on here until we hear otherwise its done on seniority thats what we were told last week officially and is it not reasonable to let those with the most years leave the business with something there's people on here determined to put a spanner in the works for the only fair way of dealing with redundancy :arrrghh

[redlen]

You do realise Simon Thompson in a press release has stated not seniority but attendance, sick record etc when deciding redundancy?

He has torn up all previous agreements.

[Boltonian-White]

Guessing what exactly? By posting what ACAS recommend as well as law firms and HR firms? There's a legal process to redundancy and a lot of people don't understand this, yourself included by the looks of things.

The main gist of the ACAS link you provided, is that the criteria for redundancy should be fair. It doesn't say that seniority cannot be used, in fact is explicitly states:

When setting up a selection pool, you should check and follow any:

agreements you may have with a recognised trade union
existing redundancy policy
If there is no existing policy or agreement, you should consider consulting any recognised trade union on how the pool should be set up.

Up to now, seniority has always been the main factor in deciding who gets VR. I appreciate that may not be the case going forward, as I mentioned in my previous post. But previous VR exercises do set a precedent!

For me, there needs to be a clear difference between the criteria for compulsory and voluntary.

With compulsory, ultimately it's up to the company who goes. That could be because a particular job disappears – potentially CSP staff for example. Or it could be based on sick or disciplinary records, etc.

With voluntary, people are choosing to give up their job in return for a sum of money. Therefore the question I ask, is should negative elements of their RM employment be used as criteria.
Personally I don't think so!

I'm assuming that RM have torn up all agreements with the CWU. For example they have reduced the amount of redundancy from 24 months to 9. Royal Mail also opened VR up to everyone eligible rather than just look at the numbers of job losses in each office and go through a relatively small pool of senior posties offering them VR. Some offices after all won't have any VR due to the amount of vacancies in them.

Seniority has always been dodgy in terms of is it age discrimination? Age discrimination after all works both ways, as I've had this discussion with an HR expert. Because seniority has been agreed with the Union it's never been challenged. Understand this is Royal Mail no longer working with the Union.

Also It will cost Royal Mail far more to do this on a seniority basis and they will have a set budget for redundancy. This is a cost saving exercise and spending huge amounts of money kind of defeats the purpose.

I'm trying to look at this from a legal / financial perspective rather than "how it's always been done". I think those days are over just like a lot of things with the job now.

[RobertT]

You do realise Simon Thompson in a press release has stated not seniority but attendance, sick record etc when deciding redundancy?

He has torn up all previous agreements.

You mean this: viewtopic.php?f=87&t=107658

That clearly says compulsory redundancy!

[RobertT]

Guessing what exactly? By posting what ACAS recommend as well as law firms and HR firms? There's a legal process to redundancy and a lot of people don't understand this, yourself included by the looks of things.

The main gist of the ACAS link you provided, is that the criteria for redundancy should be fair. It doesn't say that seniority cannot be used, in fact is explicitly states:

When setting up a selection pool, you should check and follow any:

agreements you may have with a recognised trade union
existing redundancy policy
If there is no existing policy or agreement, you should consider consulting any recognised trade union on how the pool should be set up.

Up to now, seniority has always been the main factor in deciding who gets VR. I appreciate that may not be the case going forward, as I mentioned in my previous post. But previous VR exercises do set a precedent!

For me, there needs to be a clear difference between the criteria for compulsory and voluntary.

With compulsory, ultimately it's up to the company who goes. That could be because a particular job disappears – potentially CSP staff for example. Or it could be based on sick or disciplinary records, etc.

With voluntary, people are choosing to give up their job in return for a sum of money. Therefore the question I ask, is should negative elements of their RM employment be used as criteria.
Personally I don't think so!

I'm assuming that RM have torn up all agreements with the CWU. For example they have reduced the amount of redundancy from 24 months to 9. Royal Mail also opened VR up to everyone eligible rather than just look at the numbers of job losses in each office and go through a relatively small pool of senior posties offering them VR. Some offices after all won't have any VR due to the amount of vacancies in them.

Seniority has always been dodgy in terms of is it age discrimination? Age discrimination after all works both ways, as I've had this discussion with an HR expert. Because seniority has been agreed with the Union it's never been challenged. Understand this is Royal Mail no longer working with the Union.

Also It will cost Royal Mail far more to do this on a seniority basis and they will have a set budget for redundancy. This is a cost saving exercise and spending huge amounts of money kind of defeats the purpose.

I'm trying to look at this from a legal / financial perspective rather than "how it's always been done". I think those days are over just like a lot of things with the job now.

I appreciate what you're doing, but ultimately the criteria for voluntary redundancy hasn't been made public, therefore all we can do is just guess, including you!

[redlen]

Have always been of the opinion seniority cannot be discriminatory as it is done on length of service, not age or sex. However, it cannot be the only process used as a selection criteria, that then in my opinion would be discrininatory

But that would take an employment tribunal to decide.

[Boltonian-White]

Guessing what exactly? By posting what ACAS recommend as well as law firms and HR firms? There's a legal process to redundancy and a lot of people don't understand this, yourself included by the looks of things.

The main gist of the ACAS link you provided, is that the criteria for redundancy should be fair. It doesn't say that seniority cannot be used, in fact is explicitly states:

When setting up a selection pool, you should check and follow any:

agreements you may have with a recognised trade union
existing redundancy policy
If there is no existing policy or agreement, you should consider consulting any recognised trade union on how the pool should be set up.

Up to now, seniority has always been the main factor in deciding who gets VR. I appreciate that may not be the case going forward, as I mentioned in my previous post. But previous VR exercises do set a precedent!

For me, there needs to be a clear difference between the criteria for compulsory and voluntary.

With compulsory, ultimately it's up to the company who goes. That could be because a particular job disappears – potentially CSP staff for example. Or it could be based on sick or disciplinary records, etc.

With voluntary, people are choosing to give up their job in return for a sum of money. Therefore the question I ask, is should negative elements of their RM employment be used as criteria.
Personally I don't think so!

I'm assuming that RM have torn up all agreements with the CWU. For example they have reduced the amount of redundancy from 24 months to 9. Royal Mail also opened VR up to everyone eligible rather than just look at the numbers of job losses in each office and go through a relatively small pool of senior posties offering them VR. Some offices after all won't have any VR due to the amount of vacancies in them.

Seniority has always been dodgy in terms of is it age discrimination? Age discrimination after all works both ways, as I've had this discussion with an HR expert. Because seniority has been agreed with the Union it's never been challenged. Understand this is Royal Mail no longer working with the Union.

Also It will cost Royal Mail far more to do this on a seniority basis and they will have a set budget for redundancy. This is a cost saving exercise and spending huge amounts of money kind of defeats the purpose.

I'm trying to look at this from a legal / financial perspective rather than "how it's always been done". I think those days are over just like a lot of things with the job now.

I appreciate what you're doing, but ultimately the criteria for voluntary redundancy hasn't been made public, therefore all we can do is just guess, including you!

Well I guess we'll just have to see what happens. Doesn't matter how other VR's have been handled by every other company / institution.

[Boltonian-White]

Have always been of the opinion seniority cannot be discriminatory as it is done on length of service, not age or sex. However, it cannot be the only process used as a selection criteria, that then in my opinion would be discrininatory

But that would take an employment tribunal to decide.

Age discrimination works both ways. Everyone assumes it's always older people this law is designed to protect.

[RobertT]

Well I guess we'll just have to see what happens. Doesn't matter how other VR's have been handled by every other company / institution.

You've said yourself that you assume RM have ripped up previous agreements – but you don't know that for sure!

You say that other companies use different methods. That may be true, but RM have always used seniority and it doesn't automatically mean they won't continue to do so!

I'm sure there's plenty of companies that use different methods, as your ACAS link proves!

What's important, is up to now there hasn't been a definitive answer to what criteria will be used for VR. No doubt the conjecture will continue until we do!

[timbo1234]

People creating mischief on here until we hear otherwise its done on seniority thats what we were told last week officially and is it not reasonable to let those with the most years leave the business with something there's people on here determined to put a spanner in the works for the only fair way of dealing with redundancy :arrrghh

It cannot be seniority. It will be by the criteria RM lay down, the headcount they need by area and budgetary constraints. Work out the maths - RM want 10000 redundancies overall. But that will be within a budget. If you do it by seniority and pay VR £25k approx to the most senior you will not reach the target unless RM have a few hundred million down the back of the sofa.

[RobertT]

It cannot be seniority. It will be by the criteria RM lay down, the headcount they need by area and budgetary constraints. Work out the maths - RM want 10000 redundancies overall. But that will be within a budget. If you do it by seniority and pay VR £25k approx to the most senior you will not reach the target unless RM have a few hundred million down the back of the sofa.

Do you know what their budget is?

They actually said they want between 5,000-6,000 redundancies. 10,000 job losses overall, with the rest being natural wastage.
6,000 VR's would make around £150 million in total, based on £25k each.

It's a one off payment for long term savings. Each job also has the costs of pension, employer NIC's, etc.

If they can give over £500 million to shareholders for no gain in the last year, they can spend £150 million on VR's.

[Boltonian-White]

It cannot be seniority. It will be by the criteria RM lay down, the headcount they need by area and budgetary constraints. Work out the maths - RM want 10000 redundancies overall. But that will be within a budget. If you do it by seniority and pay VR £25k approx to the most senior you will not reach the target unless RM have a few hundred million down the back of the sofa.

Do you know what their budget is?

They actually said they want between 5,000-6,000 redundancies. 10,000 job losses overall, with the rest being natural wastage.
6,000 VR's would make around £150 million in total, based on £25k each.

It's a one off payment for long term savings. Each job also has the costs of pension, employer NIC's, etc.

If they can give over £500 million to shareholders for no gain in the last year, they can spend £150 million on VR's.

£500 million was the gain in a lot of shareholders pockets paid for by record profits. I don't think you have a clue what their budget is but I wouldn't expect it to be anywhere near £150 million unless RM win euromillions...... that reminds me

[RobertT]

£500 million was the gain in a lot of shareholders pockets paid for by record profits. I don't think you have a clue what their budget is but I wouldn't expect it to be anywhere near £150 million unless RM win euromillions...... that reminds me

That's the record profits from the pandemic years they squandered!
They didn't have to pay out that much in dividends. They didn't have to do the share buy back scheme.

I didn't say I knew what their budget was! It was a rough calculation of what 6,000 VR's would cost.

[Boltonian-White]

£500 million was the gain in a lot of shareholders pockets paid for by record profits. I don't think you have a clue what their budget is but I wouldn't expect it to be anywhere near £150 million unless RM win euromillions...... that reminds me

That's the record profits from the pandemic years they squandered!
They didn't have to pay out that much in dividends. They didn't have to do the share buy back scheme.

I didn't say I knew what their budget was! It was a rough calculation of what 6,000 VR's would cost.

Did I say you knew? I didn't

[RobertT]

We're going off subject, going round in circles and getting petty!

Returning to the matter in hand....

Nobody currently knows the criteria for how VR will be decided. Fact!